Like a synthetic siren, The Great Pacific Garbage Patch drew Charles Moore to science; now his research raises deep questions about plastic. Moore, author of Plastic Oceans, first encountered the 2-million-square-mile floating landfill by chance in 1997, as skipper of a catamaran. He returned repeatedly to cull scientific samples, finding that the plastic in his nets outweighed zooplankton by a factor of 6-to-1—prompting not only a global reassessment of plastics’ invasiveness, but also a personal quest to achieve his own scientific credibility—and to save our oceans.

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